COMET’s MetEd Learning Resources for the Worldwide Meteorological Satellite User Community: Building on 30 Years of Innovative Instruction

Since 1989, the COMET® Program’s (www.comet.ucar.edu) staff of instructional designers, scientists, graphic artists, and web developers has been creating targeted, effective, and scientifically sound instructional materials for the geosciences in multiple languages and formats. COMET’s efforts to develop satellite and remote sensing distance learning began in the mid-1990s, with the introduction of digital satellite imagery and the launches of new generation geostationary and polar-orbiting satellite series.

Today, COMET provides over 100 online, self-paced training materials to help learners prepare for and make better use of the latest environmental satellite advancements. Funded mainly by NOAA NESDIS, EUMETSAT, and the Meteorological Service of Canada with support from other sponsors, COMET’s materials are freely accessible through the MetEd website (meted.ucar.edu). Many of the lessons are also available in Spanish, French and other languages, making learning resources more accessible to a larger international audience.

This presentation will highlight educational resources available to enhance user application of current polar-orbiting and geostationary satellite capabilities and products, including the JPSS series, the GOES-R+ satellites, and EUMETSAT’s Metop and MSG satellites. During the past two years, COMET has also focused on developing interactive lessons that provide engaging demonstrations of combined GEO and LEO observing strengths and capabilities. Topics include monitoring floodwater, assessing the wildland fire environment and fire detection, and diagnosing heavy rainfall events. COMET has produced several lessons as part of the National Weather Service’s Satellite Foundational Course for JPSS (SatFC-J) and has released updated training on applications for analyzing atmospheric water vapor and precipitation. For GOES-R+, the suite of available learning materials includes case-based exercises exploring operational uses of GLM lightning observations in the Americas, ABI applications for monitoring severe convection, and updated lessons and multilingual translations supporting the National Weather Service’s Satellite Foundational Course for GOES-R+ (SatFC-G).

COMET also continues to develop applications-focused training for EUMETSAT Metop and MSG satellites, addressing land surface products for the agricultural community, rapid scan imaging to benefit nowcasting applications, using satellite imagery to assess numerical weather prediction output, and satellite applications for climate monitoring. Stakeholders needing to use and interpret satellite products can access the available training to learn about the improvements these new technologies bring to decision support, short-term forecasting, numerical weather prediction, and environmental monitoring.